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Rabat – After El Mundo, Buzzfeed News, and Spanish news outlet El Pais reported that a pregnant Moroccan seasonal worker in Spain’s Huelva farms was allegedly sexually assaulted.
El Pais said that the Moroccan farmer was seven months pregnants when she was sexually assaulted by one of the supervisors working on a farm in Heluva.
She told Spanish newspaper El Pais that the attacker followed her to the shower, asking her for “sexual activities.”
She said that she resisted, and “he left only when some women intervened,” expressing regret for not filing a complaint against him. “Because I was afraid,” she said.
The alleged victim said that she then refused to go back to Morocco, fearing the reaction of her family and her husband.
“I will only return to Morocco when the truth breaks out, I want to go home with my head up,” she said.
The alleged victim is also a mother of two children. She said that she traveled to Spain in order to earn some money for her sick son.
Several Moroccan women have filed complaints against supervisors in charges of rape, sexual harassment, and assaults in Huelva farms.
Morocco’s Ministry of Employment twice denied that sexual assaults against Moroccan seasonal workers have been recorded in Spain.
In its second statement, published last Friday, the ministry only recognized that a suspect was questioned for alleged sexual assault, adding that the delegations from Spain and Morocco inspected the conditions of Moroccan farmers in Spain throughout the month of May.
The ministry said that “no cases of sexual harassment” were recorded, with the exception of a 47-year old suspect being subjected to a judicial inquiry in Spain.
The ministry said that Moroccan seasonal farmers began returning to Morocco on May 25 and will continue until the beginning of July.
The statement added that it brought back 400 workers on June 5, coinciding with the end of the fruit harvesting period in the farm concerned by the harassment allegations.
